The Cowards (51 page)

Well, then maybe you won’t be around very long, I thought to myself, but all I said was, ‘Well, it’s up to you. But I’d stick Benes in there, if I were you.’

His eyes twitched a bit as if he was thinking I was showing too little respect for a statesman, even if it was Benes. Then, with that same servile smile, he said, ‘Thank you, Mr Smiricky, for … well … for … but I’ll just leave Dr Kramar in there.’

There was no helping the poor guy. I decided to forget about it and take a look around the square instead. Maybe the guys would be there by now. And the girls. And I’d wait around for Irena.

‘Well, maybe you can get away with it,’ I said, with a smile. ‘I’ve got to be going. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye, Mr Smiricky, and thank you,’ he said, and bowed again. I walked on, People dressed up in their Sunday best were already heading towards the square. A smaller bunch was crowding around Moutelik’s display window. All those pictures he was taking, I thought to myself, and headed over. And there they were. I shoved my way up close to the window and saw that Berty, that fool, had put me at the top of his display and
underneath my picture was the caption:
‘Defender of Our Fatherland.’
Jesus Christ! I hadn’t wanted anything like
that
! I’d wanted the picture to show off with but not have myself put on display in his show window like the village idiot. I could already hear the other guys razzing me about it. Hell. I looked at my picture. Well, it wasn’t a bad snapshot. But that awful caption underneath – ‘Defender of Our Fatherland.’ I could have socked Berty; it would be a pleasure. And then I almost burst out laughing. What had I been defending anyway? If only these people, with all their noses pressed up to the window, knew what I’d been fighting for. And how much I cared about ‘the Fatherland’. And what I really cared about. If they only knew what I’d done on the eve of these great events and what I’d been thinking about and how worried I was about that other great defender of his Fatherland – Zdenek Pivonka. And how well it suited me that he’d disappeared while defending his country. And how his war widow fitted into my plans. Oh, God! I remembered Irena and glanced at my watch. There was still plenty of time so I started looking at the other pictures. There were captions under all of them, just like I knew there would be. One group was composed of Mr Frinta, Mr Jungwirth, and Mr Wolf, all sporting armbands and standing in the brewery yard, grinning into Berty’s Leica. Underneath was the caption,
‘Everybody Volunteered’
, and under a portrait of Dr Bohadlo, striding across the bridge in his knickers and with his hunting rifles, Berty had written,
‘Into the Fray!’
Most of the other captions were like that. A fuzzy picture of German tanks creeping away from the customs house bore the inscription,
‘Enemy on the Horizon’
, and for a shot of poor Hrob kneeling beside the shattered dugout holding a bazooka, Berty’s incomprehensible fantasy had come up with,
‘Neither Gain nor Glory – the NATION is All!’
Berty was obviously a chip off the old block. But still, Hrob’s picture was poignant. Thinking about what had happened the day before yesterday, tears came to my eyes. I could still see the highway glistening in the rain and Hrob’s red head and now here on Berty’s snapshot, which had turned out exceptionally well, he knelt for ever, full of enthusiasm, hunched beside the grey stone dugout
wall with the strip of glistening highway and the black tank below, its long snout aimed at him. And in the background, the pretty rolling countryside and scraps of clouds in the sky. It was a masterpiece. But that wasn’t Berty’s doing. If anybody deserved the credit it was his dad for being able to buy him the Leica. Again I thought about Hrob and how he’d stood in line to enlist in the army, obedient and eager, and then lying so still there in the grass. If anybody had done anything real worthwhile, it was Hrob. But it went against my grain to call him a patriot, even in the privacy of my own thoughts. He didn’t deserve it. Mr Jungwirth and Machacek and Kaldoun and those guys – those were the patriots, and if they liked the word they could have it. But not Hrob. Hrob was something better. I remembered him at school, munching bread behind me and the smell when he opened his mouth; I remembered him always having patches on his pants and how he’d stare hungrily while Berty finished off a couple of sausages at the ten o’clock recess. I was sorry he’d had to die the way he did and so young and I thought about his mother, probably shrieking and tear-streaked and hoarse right now, and suddenly Mr Kaldoun and Moutelik and the others – and me, too, stuck up in a window like an idiot – struck me as dumb and ridiculous. It was awful. Still, the best thing to do was not worry too much about it. I made up my mind I wouldn’t say anything to Berty about it. Let him leave the picture where it was and to hell with it. I turned away from the window and walked slowly towards the square. Flags and banners fluttered in the brisk wind and the sun was shining brightly. I stopped at the corner by the loan association office. Long banners hung from the church and from the theatre and City Hall was decked out with a whole array of flags. A regular Sunday promenade streamed along the streets and around the square. The speaker’s platform in front of City Hall was draped with red cloth and flanked by propped-up birches. The sloping square, which yesterday had still been cluttered with refugees’ bundles, gleamed clean and empty now. The refugees had vanished. It was a spring day and it was peacetime, and it struck me that I’d soon be setting out for Prague. It had been a whole year since I’d last been there. We’d gone there to play at
the last big wartime affair, an amateur jazz festival in Lucerna Hall. There’d been an air raid that night and the concert had broken off in the middle. We’d played ‘St Louis Blues’, I remember, and ‘Solitude’, only we’d changed the names to
‘Die schöne Stadt im Süden’
and
‘Liebling, mein Liebling’
concealing all that beauty under those awful words, and the Lucerna sparkled and shone with light and the balconies were packed and people hollered and clapped and stamped their feet and Emil Ludvik
*
was on the jury and he talked to us after the concert and the kids in the audience raised a terrific rumpus after every number and it lasted until late at night. Then we went home on the morning express, sleepy and depressed, and we had to pay a fine at the factory for missing half a day’s work and they wanted to report me to the personnel office because I’d missed a lot of half-days. But it’d been terrific. The most wonderful time of my life. And now it was peacetime and there’d be jazz and night clubs and everything again. I looked around me and wondered.

I was still standing there thinking when suddenly I heard an odd far-off noise. It sounded like the clatter of hundreds of wheels; it was coming closer. There was a sharp whip crack and then through the gap in the anti-tank barrier two Steppe ponies appeared pulling a wagon with a Russian up front. The Russian was cracking his whip over his head and singing as the ponies galloped along, the wagon wheels rattling over the cobblestones. When I was watching the first one, a second wagon appeared, then another and another and another, as one after the other they squeaked through the anti-tank barrier and hurtled along the street and through the square, heading west. The air was filled with creaks and rattles and the crack of the long whips. Like a wild stampede, they rumbled past in rapid procession – the red-cheeked Russians towering over the rumps of their flea-bitten ponies, bellowing out their Russian songs. The people on the sidewalks gawked. The wagons hurtled by at breakneck speed, the wiry little horses tossing their manes. There was an endless line of them. Their smell filled the air – the smell of the tundra or taiga – and, breathing it in and looking at those weatherbeaten men’s faces, it seemed incredible
that such people really existed, people who knew nothing about jazz or girls either, probably, and who just shot by – unshaven, revolvers strapped around their greasy pants, bottles of vodka stuck in their hip pockets, excited, drunk, and triumphant, not thinking about the things I thought about, completely different from me, and awfully strange, yet with something awfully attractive about them, too. I admired them. So this was the Red Army, dashing by at full speed, dusty, sweaty, barbaric as the Scythians, and I thought about Blok again whose poems somebody had lent me during the war and wasn’t sure whether something new wasn’t about to start, something as big as a revolution and I wondered what effect it would have on me and my world. I didn’t know. Everything was tearing by so fast I felt lost in it all. I knew they’d be given a big welcome and that there’d be speechmaking and that everybody would be enthusiastic about communism and that I’d be loyal. I didn’t have anything against communism. I didn’t know anything about it for one thing, and I wasn’t one of those people who are against something just because their parents and relatives and friends are. I didn’t have anything against anything, just as long as I could play jazz on my saxophone, because that was something I loved to do and I couldn’t be for anything that was against that. And as long as I could watch the girls, because that meant being alive. For me, then, two things meant life. I knew there was a hunger in those people riding past on those wagons and in those who’d be setting up the party and discussion groups and Marxist study groups and all that now – a hunger for knowledge. I’d already got to know them at the factory, from discussions we’d had in the john, and when I’d talked about the solar system and about galaxies and Apollinaire and American history they’d listened, wide eyed. There was hunger in them for things I was glutted with. It was different with me. With my past and my ancestors and education taken for granted for generations and just comfort and luxury in general. It was interesting to read about people like them. About the Negroes in America, the mujiks in Russia, the way people had shot the workers and so on. To read about this thirst for knowledge, this struggle for a better life. It was
interesting and even moving at times, so that sometimes actually tears came to your eyes, but only because you were sentimental, because you were touched by the idea of poverty and suffering like my mother at Christmas when she wore a silk dress and wept when she heard the carols. Otherwise, it didn’t really touch us. It was remote. It wasn’t something really close to my heart, it was outside and far off, remote. I’d had an education and so had everybody else I knew and we had all the comforts of life and civilization. Actually, education didn’t even seem important; it was something you just took for granted, like railroads and aspirin, for instance. What really mattered was girls and music. And thinking about them. But finally, ultimately, nothing mattered. Everything was nothing, for nothing, and led to nothing. There was only the animal fear of death, because that’s the only thing nobody knows anything about, and that fear alone was enough to keep a person going in his nothingness. I wondered whether some day this fear, too, would lose its importance for me.

The wagons kept rattling past and suddenly I felt terribly depressed. I turned around and saw Haryk and Benno with Lucie and Helena coming from the church against the tide of the wagons. Lucie was wearing a dress that looked like a Carpathian-Ukrainian folk costume, with a fringe along the hem of the skirt like Sokol teenagers wear on their pants, and it was funny but on Lucie it looked good. She kept stopping to yell at the Russians as they drove by and to toss them a rose from a huge bouquet she held in her arms. Benno, Helena, and Haryk walked along in silence; they weren’t yelling at anybody. I waited for them and knew what Benno would say when he saw me, and he did: ‘Greetings, defender of our fatherland.’

‘Did you volunteer?’ added Haryk.

‘Shut up,’ I said. ‘You better just keep an eye on Lucie so she won’t start necking with one of our liberators.’

‘You hear?’ Haryk called to Lucie. But she wasn’t listening.

‘Zdrastvujte!’
she screamed like she’d gone out of her head.

Haryk watched her in disgust. ‘She’s gone nuts,’ he said.

‘Listen, before I forget it,’ said Benno, ‘there’s a rehearsal this afternoon at two o’clock at the Port. We’re playing at six tonight in the square.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘Yeah. We’re going to celebrate peace.’

‘And there’s going to be dancing?’

‘Sure,’ said Benno.

The last of the wagons had rattled by. People were starting to crowd up in front of City Hall. Mr Petrbok’s brass band was lining up right in front of the platform. The clock in the tower showed quarter to ten.

‘Let’s go up and get a place,’ said Haryk.

‘Come on,’ said Benno.

‘I’ve got to wait here,’ I said.

‘Who for?’ said Benno.

‘Irena,’ I said coolly.

Benno looked at me like I’d gone mad too and shook his head. ‘You were, are, and always will be a fool,’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘Well, so long,’ said Benno.

‘So long,’ I said. They left. I stood there alone on the corner again. The local dignitaries were assembling in front of the platform. There was the former mayor, Mr Prudivy, who’d apparently taken over again now that Kühl was gone – the Regierungskommissar under whom he’d been compelled to serve throughout the war as Czech deputy. Then there was Mr Kaldoun and Mr Krocan and Mr Machacek – the whole bunch, including General Director Heiser, Dr Sabata, Dr Hubalek, the head of the hospital. They were all standing in front of the red platform in their black suits, consulting among themselves. The crowd was growing and the police were keeping everything under control. I saw Police Chief Rimbalnik, in his white coat and corset, majestically giving orders. I looked away. No sign of Irena. It didn’t surprise me and as the minutes passed I got more and more irritated and then really mad at her. Only whenever I got mad at her because she didn’t show up, I realized how much I loved her and yearned for her more than before. I thought over what had happened the afternoon before
and the memory of it went to my head. When I came back to earth again, the square was already full and the clock said half past ten. I stood on tiptoe and looked for Irena. Still no sign of her. I couldn’t have seen her anyway because the sidewalks all around the square were packed. She’d stood me up. Her promises were always like that. She’d stood me up and God only knew where she was. Maybe Zdenek had come back in the meantime. That was probably it. I felt depressed. Then I pulled myself together and elbowed my way through the crowd up towards the platform. When people glared at me, I told them I was on the welcoming committee. I was rude and didn’t give a damn if I was. I elbowed my way right up to the front so I had a perfect view of the platform. Irena – what a bitch she was. A little girl holding a bouquet and wearing a folk costume stood in front of the platform; she was shaking with stage-fright. It was Manicka Kaldounova; I knew her and I felt kind of sorry for her, but not very. The gentlemen from the welcoming committee kept glancing at their watches and shifting their feet nervously. The brass band had been all polished up; they stood there with their tubas and horns all ready to go, waiting. People around me were grumbling. It was hot and already half past ten. Every now and then some kind of rustle would start on the street and people would stop talking but then nothing happened. I was sweating like mad and then finally shouting and applause drifted in from somewhere and I knew General Jablonkovski had entered town. Everybody turned to look off towards the corner by the loan association office. The applause swelled and you could hear the shouting and applause sweeping in towards us and then all at once one open car came around the corner, then another, and they drove slowly through the two lines of people towards the platform. The welcoming committee lined up. Somebody shoved the little flower girl forward. The door of the first car opened and out stepped a fat ruddy-faced man wearing red riding breeches with double stripes down the sides and a chestful of medals. The little girl recited her little speech while the general listened courteously. Then he bent over, hoisted her up in the air and held her there for a second because there were lots of photographers
bustling around. I caught sight of the ever-present Berty taking the general’s picture from an impossible angle just as the brass band let out a big blare. The general quickly set the little girl down on the ground and saluted, the gentlemen from the welcoming committee stood at attention, people started taking their hats off. The band was playing the Russian national anthem. I saw everybody standing there, stiff as posts, and noticed the deacon among the welcoming dignitaries. He was cowering at the back with a purple bib under his Roman collar and he looked worried. The band thundered to the end of the Russian anthem and launched into ‘Where Is My Home?’ Then it clanked into ‘The Lightning Flashes over Tatra’ and people started putting their hats on again. But Mr Petrbok was just getting warmed up. The square resounded with the deep tones of the bass trombone and I realized they were starting off on ‘God Save the King’. At first, the crowd glanced around hesitantly, then took their hats off again. The concert continued with ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, and wound up with the ‘Marseillaise’. The band didn’t play the Chinese anthem. They probably didn’t have the music. The whole thing lasted for a quarter of an hour. General Jablonkovski’s hand had fallen asleep from saluting so long and the gentlemen in the black suits were sweating. So was Mr Petrbok. Finally he concluded with a majestic flourish and beamed triumphantly at the general. The general removed his hand from his cap and turned a crushing gaze on Dr Sabata who was approaching him with a piece of paper. Dr Sabata put on his pince-nez and started stammering something. Once more the general stood at courteous attention, the sun shining right into his ruddy face, and a big shiny drop of sweat trickled along his nose. Behind him stood his bemedalled staff, looking bored.